Which components will best help me overclock an Athlon 64 3000+?

[AzuthZero]

Ok, I'm upgrading my PC, and I've decided to go Athlon 64. Simple enough choice. After looking at prices, I figured the Athlon 64 3000+ is really cheap, and I can probably overclock it to at least3200+ range I'm hoping.

Now here's where I need help. I need a motherboard with an AGP slot since I'm using an old Radeon 9700 Pro and can't really afford to upgrade right now. Anybody have any experience overclocking with these boards? I just don't want to get a board that won't let me overclock, a mistake I won't make twice. ( I bought a locked 2500+ barton 2 years ago but couldn't overclock it past a 190 FSB due to the motherboard not being able to handle it)

RAM shouldn't be too mucb of an issue, right? I've been reading that it doesn't matter if the memory divider is 1:1 like it did for older cores, so i was just gonna get a GB or two of the cheaper stuff...

And finally, heatsinks. Will I need to upgrade from a stock heatsink? How much of a difference should I expect if I do upgrade? I don't suppose there's anyway to tweak an Aero 7+ heatsink/fan to fit the 939 socket, eh? ^_^

Thanks for all your help! Peace

EDITED to reflect a slight change of the questions.

 

[AzuthZero]

I've been looking around and realised that there are no boards that have both an AGP and PCIe slot, so I decided to just go with an AGP only board. It would cost me another $150 or so to bu a PCIe card that would give me about teh same performance as my radeon 9700 Pro.

So now to rephrase my questions:
Athlon 3000+ or 3200+? I plan to overclock as much as I can, so will I reach higher speeds with a 3000+ and a good heatsink than I will with a 3200+ and the stock heatsink?

Also, can anyone reccommend a solid AGP Athlon 64 motherboard? I'd like it if it has 2 ethernet ports as well and onboard audio is a huge plus too. Otherwise I have to buy a soundcard and a switch....

Once again, thanks a bunch! I plan to put this together as soon as I can get some helping picking out these couple of parts ^_^

 

[furballi]

3000 CPU should hit 3500 speed with ease. I would NOT waste $ on a new AGP board at this time. Stick with the current system until you have $ to upgrade the CPU, MB, and video card.

 

[coomar]

sell your 9700 pro and buy an x700 pro, their equivalent and there is one on newegg for 105 (and you should be able to get 70-80 for your card)

motherboard, the 2 best are the epox board and the dfi nf4 (though the dfi has higher power requirements and is generally bad to mix with corsair ram)

I know the dfi has 2 ethernet (1 gigalan) and its sound was second in cpu overhead to the msi listed below

a 3000 (1.8) on these boards will hit 3500 (2.2) to 3800 (2.4) even if its a bad chip

even you want to stick with agp (and shoot yourself in the foot), the msi neo2 plat is what your looking for (though I don't know if it has 2 ethernet ports) it has the best onboard sound

 

[spiritwalker2223]

Two nice 939, AGP boards are the ABIT AV8 and the ASUS A8V-deluxe, they only have 1 ethernet connection, but they are very solid boards and you should be able to raise the fsb from 200 to 275.

 

[Mogadon]

Most people seem to recommend the MSI NEO-2 PLATINUM as being the best S939, AGP board.

 

[AzuthZero]

After reading everyone's responses here and everywhere else I've posted, everyone seems to reccommend upgrading to PCIe... Although I was gonna hold off on buying a video card, I figure what the hell, I might as well just upgrade everything now.

So now I need a good PCIe overclocking board and I've been looking at a Geforce 6800 GT for my videocard. Any thoughts on thesewould be much appreciated. I don't really wanna spend more than $300 on a videocard.

thanks again!

 

[coomar]

there is 1 or 2 6800gts for under 300, great card

the 2 best pci-e boards are the epox and dfi

since your getting an sli capable card, you might want to think about the sli editions, the epox is alot cheaper

 

[n7]

Here's a few excellent OCing mobos in the order i would recommend them:

[*]DFI Lanparty Ultra-D - be warned, this mobo is picky about everything, look below if you don't want to have to tweak everything
[*]Abit AN8 Ultra - passive cooling means silence
[*]Epox 9NPA+ Ultra - best value OCing mobo out there
[*]MSI Neo4 Platinum - pretty much has everything
[*]MSI Neo4-F - very cheap, no IEEE1394, but OCs well

Stock HSF is fine for OCing.

For video card, X800XL would be the best value.

If you decide to stay with s939 AGP, then the choice is pretty much universally agreed: MSI Neo2 Platinum

 

[Shimmishim]

f you want to keep that 9700pro there is supposed to be an AGP to PCI-e adapter that's being released or maybe it has been released... coming out or already out...

or is it pci-e to agp? er... i think it's agp to pci-e

this way you can keep that card and still use a board like the dfi or epox

 

[AzuthZero]

I've decided I'm either gonna go with the Geforce 6800 GT or the X800XL. Still looking into the two.

For motherboards, I'm looking at the epox and MSI boards. I don't really care to get a picky board like the DFI, and poassive cooling isn't that important to me.

One last question before I go ahead and order my Athlon 64 3000+. Are there different cores for it? Any overclock better than the others? I haven't really looked into tthis aspect of it yet, but I will when I get home from work, so I just thought I'd ask in case anyone happened to see this.

Thanks again, and I can't wait to put this beast together! ^_^

 

[furballi]

It's hard to beat the Abit AX8 for $75 after rebate. Performance wise, it's only 2 to 3% slower than the quickest NF4 board. I have no problem hitting 285MHz FSB with an AMD 3000 Venice CPU. The board is very quiet thanks to passive cooling of the northbridge chip. Firewire is also included.

 

[n7]

Venice core, preferably the E3 revision, or at least not the E6.